Blogs and Commentary

Bracket Projection: NCAA Division III Men

JD Campbell and Washington
College are in the tourney, but who will they match-up with in the
first round? Jac Coyne has Colorado College making a
visit. (Kevin P. Tucker)

The Division III regular season is in the books, and tonight at 10 p.m. we'll find out exactly who
will fill out the 30 team bracket of teams racing for Memorial Day
weekend. The field will be filled with 20 Pool A (automatic
qualifiers) teams, five Pool B (independent) teams and five Pool C
(at-large) teams.

Before the announcement rolls around, I'm going to take a stab
at what the brackets will look like. In full disclosure, there is a
lot of math involved in this process and, frankly, I'd rather talk
to coaches and write stories than burn my afternoon crunching
various criteria. As such, this is more a dead-reckoning bracket
more than anything scientific (although it does involve input from
outside sources).

From my vantage point, 28 of the 30 teams in the bracket are
self-evident. The fifth Pool B (I went with Otterbein) and the
fifth Pool C (Wesleyan) are the only I could see being somewhat up
for grabs. The real trick with projecting brackets is getting the
match-ups correct. The selection committee has a relatively firm
set of criteria in which to select and seed the tourney, but
geography – specifically the 500-mile barrier that mandates a
flight – can jumble natural seeds.

The last hurdle in seeding the Division III tournament is
balancing the North and South brackets. After I selected my teams I
had 16 South region teams, so somebody had to get shipped
northward. If the last Pool C goes to the South instead of the
North (as I have it), that will further muddy the bracket.

With all of that in mind, this is what I've come up with.

Men's Division III Projected Bracket

RIT (Liberty) vs. BYE
Montclair State (Skyline) at Wesleyan (Pool C)

New England College (NAC) at Union (Pool C)
Western New England (CCC) at Amherst (Pool C)